


Belle's Coffee

by BardicRaven



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, La Belle et la Bête | Beauty and the Beast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Bad Attitude, Bad Days, Coffee, Coffee Shops, Coffee cures All Ills, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9056302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: Sometimes, a haven is all you need.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butterflyslinky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyslinky/gifts), [Elfwreck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/gifts).



Belle unlocked the door, turned the sign to ‘Open’, and began her day. The shop had already been sparkling-clean before she’d left last night, so it was only a matter of a few moments to get water heating and beverages brewing.

She loved this time of the day, before everyone started coming in. When the shop and the day were both hers, ripe with possibilities. Later, the day would become what it would it be, the ups and downs settling into place, the people and the events fitting themselves in like jig-saw puzzle pieces into the puzzle that was life.

But now, at the beginning of it all, that was when anything was possible. And that was the time she loved the most.

* * *

What she loved much less was the man who stomped into her shop at about ten that day. His snarling and snapping made her look to see if he had fur. Certainly he was acting like a beast. She wouldn't have been surprised to see him fuzzy, but he was not.

Just another man with a bad attitude. It seemed like there were all too many of those these days. The economy was hitting people everywhere. Middle managers and those who’d previously thought themselves safe were often the hardest hit.

Or at least the most surprised.

And as she knew all-too-well, surprise didn’t make for happy or contented humans. She’d felt it herself, back when… well, then, and she was well-acquainted with it in her customers.

At least when they walked in. She did her best to ensure that by the time they left, they were in a better place, with warm food and good coffee in their bellies and words of good cheer for their hearts and minds and souls.

She did her best for them, for all her customers, often slipping in a bit of extra when they weren’t looking if they were a long-time customer fallen on hard times, and she knew what they liked. Even if they never said anything, and they often didn’t, Belle could tell when a customer had hit an economic snag by the way their long, involved coffee-requests would turn to ‘cup of coffee, black’.

The difference between a four-dollar-and-up cup and a sixty-nine cent cup. She didn’t hold it against them – often wondered why they kept coming in at all if things were so hard, but decided that it was probably that they didn’t want to give up the familiar. Have to admit just how much things had changed.

She could relate.

* * *

But for now, there was this angry man in a black trench-coat for her to deal with. He looked anywhere from twenty-five to forty, in that way that people have after a certain point, when their bodies have decided what they want to be for the long haul.

Long hair, caught back with a ribbon, which she saw as he took off his coat and flung it across the back of the bar-chair. _Lord,_ she thought. _He looks like he’s stepping out of some romance novel. Who ties their hair back with a ribbon that didn’t live before the twentieth-century?_

Hers not to question why. Fashion wasn’t what she dealt here, it was coffee, and goodness knows that if she’d been judging her clients on fashion-sense, she’d have gone out of business years ago.

“May I help you, sir?” She wasn’t quite sure why she put the ‘sir’ on the end. She usually didn’t. But this time, with this man, she somehow felt it appropriate.

Or maybe he just intimidated her that much.

“Coffee. Black.” He paused, looked over at her pastry counter. “And one of your bacon-doughnuts.”

“Coming right up. Make yourself at home.” This time, she managed to talk to him in more of her customary style – that mix of friendliness and professionalism that had earned ‘Belle’s Coffee’ top marks over the last ten years.

“I’ll do that.” Was that just the slightest hint of thaw she heard in his tone? Belle wondered as she poured him his cup of coffee and set it in front of him.

As she started to set out the sugar and cream in front of him, out of sheer habit, he snapped. “I said I wanted it black.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” Belle didn’t feel sorry at all. She felt annoyed at this person who came into her lovely shop with his grump and his attitude, trying to spoil a day that had, up until then, been full of goodness.

“So,” she asked after she removed the offending items and slid his doughnut over to him on a plage/plate. “what’s got your tail in a knot today?”

“What?” he snapped, looking up at her from his phone, where he’d been busy scrolling through nothing good, to judge by the expression that grew sourer and sourer the more he scrolled.

“What’s wrong?” she repeated. “You look like you’ve never seen a sunny day.”

“Maybe I haven’t.”

“I doubt it.” She indicated the world around her. “There’s always at least one sunny day in a person’s life. I have it on good authority.”

“Really.” he said dryly. “And what makes you such an expert on sunny days?”

“Lost my mother when I was five. It was hard to tell who raised who – me or my dad. Learned a lot about storm-clouds. Decided I liked sunny days better.” She stared him down. “So, I ask you, what’s got you so upset today?” Her expression softened just a touch. “And is there anything I can do to help?”

“No.” he said, but softer than he had been. “No, there’s nothing you can do. But… thank you for asking.” His voice was raspy, as if rusty with disuse, stumbling over the words as if ‘thank you’ wasn’t something he was used to saying in his life.

He seemed the type.

“You’re welcome,” Belle replied, wiping an imaginary stain off the counter. “And you might be surprised.”

“Maybe.” he allowed. “But not today.”

“Fair enough.” She looked up as the bell sounded, announcing the beginning of the lunch crowd. “You know where I am.”

“That I do.” And the almost-warmth she heard in his voice as she turned away to take orders for coffee, tea, and snacks, was somehow the best thing Belle had heard in a long time.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> ##### Blame (or praises, depending) to the author of 'No One ****'s Like Gaston' (post-Yuletide revealed as 'Elfwreck'). They mentioned 'Coffeeshop AU' and then this fell out of my head.
> 
> I've been writing for Yuletide and I just can't stop! :D
> 
> ##### Happy & Merry!!
> 
> ##### Yule Goat to be Named Laters
> 
> ##### P.S. Am gifting this to you as well, Elfwreck, since it was your not-a-prompt that inspired this fic. Hope you enjoy this belated gift. -B! 


End file.
